Pulakeshin II’s fleet takes Puri

01Hundreds of ships

The Chalukyas of Vatapi were a land power on the Deccan plateau. Ravikirti’s Aihole inscription of 634, the court poet’s list of Pulakeshin’s wars, includes a sea fight. In the Konkan, it says, the waves of the Maurya forces were swept away by the waters of his army. Then, with hundreds of ships that looked like herds of rutting elephants, he attacked Puri, the fortune of the western sea, and the sky, dark as lotus leaves and crowded with clouds, looked like the sea itself. Puri was the island capital of the Konkan Mauryas, a line of local kings otherwise known only from a few records.

02Which island

The inscription does not give Puri’s position. Most scholars place it at Gharapuri, the island in Mumbai harbour the Portuguese renamed Elephanta, where the great cave of Shiva with the three-faced Sadashiva had been cut a generation or two earlier. Others prefer Rajapuri near Janjira, further south. Either way, the war gave the Chalukyas the ports of the north Konkan, and their governors ruled the coast for over a century. It is one of the few naval actions recorded anywhere in India before the Cholas.

Person · Reigned c. 610–642 CEPulakeshin IIPulakeshin II won his throne from his uncle in a civil war, then conquered from Gujarat to Vengi and stopped Harsha at the Narmada. His deeds are carved in the Aihole inscription of 634 CE; he fell when the Pallavas took Vatapi in 642.Read →